Silver City

by Jeff Guinn

  ALSO BY JEFF GUINN

  FICTION

  Glorious: A Novel of the American West

  Buffalo Trail

  NONFICTION

  Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson

  The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral—And How It Changed the American West

  Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

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  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by 24 Words, LLC

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Guinn, Jeff, author.

  Title: Silver city / Jeff Guinn.

  Description: New York : G.P. Putnam’s Sons, [2017]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016038937 (print) | LCCN 2016044729 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399165436 (hardback) | ISBN 9781101623268 (epub)

  Subjects: | BISAC: FICTION / Westerns. | FICTION / Historical. | GSAFD: Western stories.

  Classification: LCC PS3557.U375 S55 2017 (print) | LCC PS3557.U375 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016038937

  PHOTOS HERE COURTESY OF THE ARIZONA HISTORICAL SOCIETY

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Also by Jeff Guinn

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  PART ONE Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  PART TWO Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  PART THREE Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  FOR HARRISON

  PROLOGUE

  ST. LOUIS

  August 1, 1874

  The fat man brought two armed guards with him to the midnight meeting along the Mississippi River docks in St. Louis. The bodyguards were rough-looking men who obviously relished a fight. There was a full moon, and its light revealed that both had pistols tucked into the waistbands of their trousers, with the handles angled for easy extraction. They stood close together behind their boss, shoulders almost touching. But Patrick Brautigan, unarmed and alone, was pleased rather than intimidated. He liked it when the opposition had guns. The weapons made them overconfident.

  “Mr. Foley, my boss has raised his offer for your warehouse property another three hundred dollars,” Brautigan said. His voice was low and void of inflection. At such a late hour, nothing else stirred along this stretch of docks. “You’re getting somewhat above fair value, enough to move on and start over somewhere else. This is the final offer. Take it.”

  Foley glanced over his shoulder at his thugs, then smiled. “And if I don’t?”

  Brautigan looked impassively at Foley and the bodyguards, and said nothing.

  “I know Rupert Douglass needs my warehouse lot for that foundry he wants to build,” Foley said. “If I don’t sell, he can’t build in the best location. So I want more than just somewhat above fair value. I want double. Go back and tell him that. Double, and we have a deal. Otherwise, no.”

  Brautigan shifted his feet. The moonlight reflected off the steel-tipped toes of his boots. He was massive, and even this slight movement caused the two gunmen to reflexively twitch their hands toward their pistol butts. “You have the boss’s offer,” Brautigan said. “He’s fair, but never foolish. Take it.”

  “I worked hard to build my business,” Foley said. “It might not seem like much to a rich bastard like Douglass, but I’m a proud man, and if he won’t meet my price, then to hell with him.”

  Brautigan asked, “Is that your final word?” His tone remained calm, but Foley still instinctively stepped back behind his bodyguards.

  “I know your reputation,” the fat man said. “When Douglass’s money won’t get him what he wants, he sends you along to see what muscle can do. Killer Boots, they call you. This time it won’t work.” He nodded to the gunmen. “Show him, boys.”

  The two men reached for their pistols. They were very fast and Brautigan seemed to move in slow motion. But somehow before they could pull the guns from their belts he grasped each of their wrists in one of his huge hands and twisted. There were the sounds of bones breaking and screams of pain. These were short-lived. Brautigan yanked one gunman toward him with his left hand and delivered a crunching head butt that rendered the man unconscious. Then he shifted his right-hand grip from the wrist to the throat of the remaining bodyguard. With little effort he raised his writhing victim high in the air, then slammed him down hard against a wooden crate. The crate smashed; splinters flew. The second gunman lay still.

  A few feet away, Foley stood paralyzed with fear. He opened his mouth to scream for help, but no sound emerged beyond a strangled croak.

  “Now you,” Brautigan said.

  Foley tried to run, but the giant was already on him. He hammered a punch into the fat man’s belly, driving the wind out of him. As Foley collapsed, struggling for breath, he twisted his face toward the sky. The last two things he saw were the bright moon and its reflection on the steel toe of Brautigan’s right boot just before it caved in his skull.

  Brautigan leaned down, grasped Foley’s shirt collar, and dragged the fat man’s corpse back to where the two bodyguards lay. Both were raggedly breathing but unconscious. Brautigan put an end to that with several more well-placed kicks.

  The warehouse Rupert Douglass wanted to buy from Foley stood about fifty yards away. One at a time, Brautigan threw the corpses over his shoulder and carried them to its padlocked front door. He tossed them down and placed their arms at their sides. When all three bodies were properly positioned, he kicked them in the face repeatedly until their features were completely pulped. The only sounds were the sloshing of the river and the increasingly soggy thuds of metal toes against skulls and skin. Brautigan spent a quarter hour at this chore. When he was done, he used Foley’s jacket to wipe h
is steel toe tips clean. Then he straightened his own clothes and walked away, whistling tunelessly and appearing for all the world like a man returning home from a relaxing late-night stroll.

  —

  AT PRECISELY TEN the next morning, Brautigan presented himself to Rupert Douglass in the upstairs study of his employer’s mansion in central St. Louis. It was a grand house, filled with the finest furniture and rare antiques. Brautigan usually had time to study the exotic clocks, vases, and other items because his boss invariably kept him waiting. But on this occasion, a butler ushered him directly in.

  As the door closed behind him, Brautigan sensed something else. Rupert Douglass, usually cool, was trying to keep his emotions under control.

  “Last night’s business was concluded satisfactorily?” Douglass rubbed a forefinger along his bristly mustache. “Foley is no longer an impediment?”

  “I suspect it will be in the afternoon papers,” Brautigan said. “Three bodies discovered outside Foley’s warehouse on the dock.”

  “Three?”

  “Foley brought along two gunmen. They shared his fate.”

  “And no connection here?”

  It was unlike Douglass to question the quality of Brautigan’s work. The giant took pride in making clean kills that in no way implicated his employer. “None.”

  Douglass nodded. “Then tomorrow I’ll call on the Widow Foley, ease her bereavement with some comforting words and ready cash from a property sale. All right, so the warehouse will be mine. We’ll have it razed within a week, get that foundry built. Later on today I’ll go over and visit with Chief Welsh, make sure his officers don’t look too hard at last night’s events. Never hurts to remind Welsh of his obligations.”

  Making payoffs to the St. Louis chief of police was one of Brautigan’s responsibilities. “You don’t want me doing that?”

  “No, you’ll be otherwise engaged.” Douglass dropped into a high-backed, overstuffed chair and gestured for Brautigan to sit on a wide couch that offered sufficient space and support for his bulk. “How long have you worked for me?”

  Brautigan sat. He was puzzled but didn’t let it show on his face. “Four years, just about.”

  Douglass rubbed his mustache again, a telltale sign that he was agitated. “Four years. I brought you in from Boston when I faced those strike threats in some of my factories. And you handled them for me, handled them well, the strikes and other things.”

  Brautigan nodded. “Other things” meant bringing Douglass’s property negotiations to successful conclusions when prospective sellers wouldn’t accept what his boss considered fair offers. Usually, people quailed before Patrick Brautigan, and agreed to take Douglass’s money. On the rare occasions when they didn’t, Brautigan did what was necessary, and afterward Rupert Douglass negotiated, always successfully, with their survivors. The St. Louis mayor, police chief, and reporters from every significant city newspaper and magazine were in Douglass’s pocket. These killings were never attributed to Douglass or even Brautigan himself, though kicked-in faces, the Killer Boots trademark, sent a clear message to anyone doing business with Douglass in the future. Counting the three last night, the kill total over four years was eight—Brautigan remembered, and did not in the slightest regret, each one. He did what he was paid to do, acting without remorse.

  “Four years,” Douglass said, “and in that time you’ve only failed me once.”

  Brautigan nodded again. Two and a half years earlier, Ellen, Rupert Douglass’s only child, had been murdered in this very mansion by her husband, Cash McLendon, Douglass’s trusted second-in-command. Actually, only Douglass thought his daughter was murdered. Everyone else at all familiar with the Douglass family knew that Ellen was crazy, her self-destructive violent tendencies held in check only by regular doses of laudanum. While Douglass and his wife were away, McLendon accidentally left a glass jar handy and a manic Ellen used its sharp shards to cut her wrists. McLendon fled to Arizona Territory, and Douglass sent Brautigan to fetch his son-in-law back and kill him before Douglass’s own eyes. To Brautigan, it made no difference whether Ellen’s death was self-inflicted or not. His boss had given an order, and he would carry it out. But in the small town of Glorious in Arizona, McLendon slipped away from him with the help of some raggedy frontier dwellers. After that, his quarry seemingly vanished. Brautigan stalked the major towns in California, where he and his boss suspected McLendon would eventually turn up, but he didn’t. Finally, after six fruitless months, Douglass summoned him back to St. Louis, where Brautigan resumed his enforcer role. But he never forgot McLendon, whose escape was the single blight on Brautigan’s strong-arm history.

  Now Brautigan said, “Do you mention this because there’s word of McLendon? Has he finally shown somewhere?”

  Douglass poured himself a cup of coffee from a steaming urn on a table beside his chair. He didn’t offer any to Brautigan. “I’ve kept my lines out. I imagined myself inside McLendon’s head, tried to understand what he’d be thinking. And it all came down to that Italian girl, the one he was with before my Ellen. After he murdered my girl he ran off to that Eye-tie out in Arizona, in that dirty little town. That’s where you nabbed him, then let him get away.”

  “Yes.” Brautigan didn’t add that McLendon escaped only because of Douglass’s ironclad rule that none of his employees should ever publicly break the law. A backwoods sheriff interceded for McLendon, leaving Brautigan no choice but to let him go.

  Douglass sipped coffee. Agitation caused his hand to tremble as he raised the cup to his lips. “It took a while, but I figured it out. The Eye-tie. Wherever she ended up, sooner or later that’s where McLendon would be too. Gabrielle Tirrito. Unusual name, easy for people to notice and remember. I learned that she went to work in a hotel in some other godforsaken town out in Arizona Territory. So I paid somebody there to keep a lookout for McLendon. Paid and waited. It’s been hard. I want my girl avenged. And now, finally. Finally.” He set down his coffee cup and pointed at Brautigan. “Pack a bag and get moving today, this morning. Take the train as far west as you can, then I suppose a stage from there. You’ll have all the money you need. I’d prefer McLendon brought back alive. I want to watch you work on him. But this time if you can’t get away with him clean, finish him there. One way or the other, I want him dead so my Ellen can rest in peace.”

  Brautigan said, “You’ve not told me where he is.”

  Douglass pulled a crumpled bit of paper from his pocket. It was a telegraph cable. “This came an hour ago, from my watcher out west. I’ll give you that name, but make contact only if necessary. As much as possible, I want McLendon snatched discreetly.”

  He handed the paper to Brautigan, who smoothed it and read the simple message: “MOUNTAIN VIEW, ARIZ TERR. HE’S HERE.”

  PART

  ONE

  1

  The town of Mountain View, in Arizona Territory, was in every respect an impressive place. It bustled at all hours, since the two silver mines on its outskirts were in full operation around the clock. Changing shifts of miners were in constant need of meals in the town’s half-dozen restaurants, none of which ever closed. They served quality, highly seasoned fare. After working underground in stifling conditions, when the miners emerged into the fresh air they craved sharp-tasting meals to revive their dulled senses. Freshly prepared Italian, French, and Chinese dishes especially satisfied them. No one on the frontier ate better.

  The scenery was spectacular. The town nestled on the southeast edge of the Pinal Mountain range; the mountain slopes were dotted with saguaro cacti and their jagged peaks rose high in the sky. At first glance the mountains seemed entirely bloodred, but careful viewing revealed subtle ribbons of green, gold, and violet bisecting the rock. Eighteen months earlier beneath that rock, prospectors had first discovered wide seams of black-veined ore. Miners cut deep tunnels underground and extracted the ore, which was then passed through complex ch
emical washes to extract gleaming bits of silver. There seemed no end to this treasure trove; as strikes continued to be made, there was a constant influx of money into the community. As a result, Mountain View exploded almost overnight into a town of relatively fine houses and business structures, many built with stone and timber imported at considerable expense from California or Mexico. Dormitory-style housing provided shelter for the miners and other lower-class workers. Most mining towns on the Western frontier were hodgepodge collections of canvas tents, adobe hovels, and warped plank shacks. In contrast, Mountain View was a showplace.

  It was also a town of burgeoning cultural sophistication. Large mining concerns headquartered in San Francisco and Denver quickly opened branch offices in Mountain View and staffed them with top-notch assayers, accountants, and engineers. Working mines meant the presence of supervisors to lead the workers and doctors to treat them. These higher-class individuals expected comfortable accommodations in upscale residences and hotels, plenty of fashionable clothing and other fancy goods available for convenient purchase in expansive shops, and quality entertainment in their leisure time. So Mountain View, its present population nearly two thousand and rising daily, had four hotels, each two-story, with all rooms including glass windows and soft mattresses with clean linens. Town saloons offered fine mixed drinks—sloe-gin fizzes were a popular choice. Traveling troupes of players passed through on a regular basis, presenting everything from Shakespeare to concerts of popular music to slapstick comedy. Saloons were currently used as makeshift theaters, but the Mountain View town council had plans to construct an honest-to-goodness performance venue soon.

  Residents walked its streets in safety. A well-compensated police force stood constant guard against the thugs and grifters who plagued other thriving frontier towns. Word spread among territorial ne’er-do-wells: Be smart. Stay away from Mountain View. And, mostly, they did.